The Complete CNBC Microsoft Guidance SNAFU

Joe Weisenthal

Oct. 23, 2009, 4:26 PM

We finally have video of how it all went down this morning, when CNBC improperly reported that Microsoft (MSFT) had lowered revenue guidance for the full year, when in fact they lowered operating expenses.

The former would have been horrible news. The latter is good news. For what it's worth, here's what Microsoft said on its call, and yes, we can see how Jim Goldman got confused.

SeekingAlpha: With operating expenses, we also continue to make excellent progress. We're lowering our guidance for the full year to a range of $26.2 billion to $26.5 billion, down from what we said in July. This decrease however also absorbs an additional $100 million to $200 million of Yahoo! integration costs should the deal pass regulatory review. We will continue to look for additional cost saving opportunities based on cost of goods sold and in operating expenses through the rest of the fiscal year.